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There once was a time when artists, some artists at least, believed in television. Not in an ironic way, as successful satirists like Stephen Colbert or the makers of "The Simpsons" do, but sincerely, as a means of broadcasting visual experiments to an interested public at large. This time was the 1970s, when television was still transmitted via radiowaves and on-demand was a thing of the future. Back then, an Argentinian artist named Jaime Davidovich, who had moved to New York City in 1963 as a painter of monochromes, began to organize and star in artist-made television. In 1976, he co-founded Cable SoHo, which is exactly what it sounds like. Two years later he became...

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